do not metaphor me

Depression is a hard thing to explain to someone who has never experienced it.  At least it is for me.  Partly because the emotion itself has so many facets to describe.  However, I am going to try.  And mainly because, for me, depression is the most selfish of my emotions, just barely above bipolar rage.  For those who just got angry at that statement, I would like to point out, I did say, “For Me”.  Please give me a chance to explain before you write off what I’m saying.

When I’m depressed, I’m not concerned about anyone but myself and my depression.  If my brain is on the death train and I’m afraid someone is going to break in my house and kill me in my sleep, I’m sleeping with the lights on.  Sorry, not sorry, if you can’t do that.  It’s happening.  If I don’t want to leave the house, I’m not leaving the house.  I don’t care whose birthday party it is or what comfort food I am craving.  If I’m depressed, I rarely choose the fake it until you make it approach.  I’m laying down and wallowing in my feelings of loneliness.  Rolling around in them like a pig in slop.  My emptiness is the only thing that matters.  And that my friends is the definition of selfish.  However, in my own defense, the feeling is just so big.

I cannot say this enough.  For a bipolar person, or at least this bipolar person, when there is a break-though of my meds and I am having a baby bipolar emotion nothing else exists.  There is no one else and nothing else.  I don’t care about other people’s feelings.  They are minute compared to mine.  And that is just the break-through emotion.

Imagine your body as a room.  Imagine your skin is a brick wall.  Then imagine the darkest, ugliest, most foreboding storm cloud you have ever seen.  Put that storm cloud in your chest.  Now every time your heart beats that cloud grows bigger, darker.  It invades your mind, your thoughts.  It rolls into your veins and travels through your entire body.  Leaching and festering to any organ, fat cell, blood platelet…etc. it gets close to.  All the while growing until it is a living thing pressing and pulsating against your skin, unable to go anywhere but inside of you.  That’s how I would describe my depression.

Lately, when I have gotten depressed, I feel nothing.  Nothing for no one or anything.  Psychologists call it a lack of interest, but I don’t think that does justice.  To me, it leaves a door open for hope and there is no hope for me in the moment.  Logically, I know I love my family.  I can see what that love looks like in my mind’s eye.  I can see the laughter and the smiles.  Emotionally, I just don’t care.  That love means nothing to me.  Because for me, by nature, emotions trump logic.  Emotions are the storm cloud I described earlier and logic is the sun or moon you know is there but cannot see.  I have to work really hard to let logic win out, to imagine the sun or moon. 

My go to phrase to help with that is, “Emotions are lying bastards.”  While it is not the most Christian of thoughts, it does get the job done.  It may take me hours, days, or even weeks but eventually I’ll pull out of it.

I know that is a hard thing to hear.  Especially for someone’s whose emotions never waver.  I’m telling you this so you see.  My bipolar is the opposite to you.  For you, your love and emotions is the truth.  It is what attaches you to people you care about.  Logic is constantly evolving and changing for you.  But for me, my emotions are constantly changing.  They are the lies.  The only continual thing in me is my logic.  Logic is the only thing I can choose, because I sure can’t choose my emotions.  My brain chooses them for me.  So when I say, “I know I love you.”  That is the deepest, most devoted thing I could ever say to you.

Below is a poem I wrote when I was sixteen years old.  When I read it, I remember so clearly that feeling of utter despair.  And that desire to explain the difference between my logical thoughts and my emotions.  If nothing above makes sense, maybe this will help.